Outstanding Achievement in Slavic Women's Studies:

Helena Goscilo (University of Pittsburgh)

Helena Goscilo has brought important texts and phenomena to the attention of Slavists and others in this country, and has gone on to establish their significance through analysis. She gives us things to talk about and starts the conversation on a high level of wit and insight. Listing all her published work would take too long for this venue, but just a few recent ones include: Dehexing Sex: Russian Womanhood During and After Glasnost and The Explosive World of Tatyana N. Tolstaya; she is co-editor with Beth Holmgren of the rich and elegant anthology Russia * Women * Culture, and editor and translator of Balancing Acts: Contemporary Stories by Russian Women.

Professor Goscilo has done important work in women's writing, feminist criticism, cultural studies, and the artistic translation of contemporary or forgotten literature. She brings Slavic women onto the horizons of feminist scholars in other literary fields. Moreover she is a true Slavist, contributing to the study and awareness of Polish literature as well as her primary field of Russian literature.

Since receiving her PhD from Indiana University, Professor Goscilo has worked in the Slavic Department of the University of Pittsburgh, where she has been department chair and regularly teaches courses at all levels, ranging from first-year Russian language and coordination of TAs to elite graduate seminars. Her outstanding abilities and generosity as a mentor have done as much to advance our field as her own lectures and publications; her feedback and encouragement of other writers in her editing contribute both to development of the individual scholars and to the whole edifice of knowledge in the profession. Finally, and perhaps most of all, we admire her colorful style, tremendous energy and personal brilliance -- perhaps she manages to teach so much because she makes it all such fun.

Best Book in Slavic Women's Studies

Mary Buckley, ed. Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

This comprehensive anthology of articles presents the issues facing women of the former Soviet Union -- including rich material on non-Russian women. Professor Buckley has gathered articles on a broad range of issues and disciplines, well-organized and with admirable scope of imagination. The fresh, clearly presented information and analysis promise easy and productive use in the classroom.

Barbara Evans Clements. Bolshevik Women (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Bolshevik Women is an important achievement, superbly researched, well-written, and compellingly argued. Professor Clements shows that the tactics that served the Bolshevichki well in the pre-revolutionary period were the very ones that allowed their failures and sidelining in the 1920's, and she demonstrates those processes of marginalization. Focusing closely on a few prominent Bolshevichki, the book is enriched with copious statistical data and interwoven with quotations from women in the Bolshevik rank and file.

Best Book by a Woman in Slavic Studies

Nancy Ries. Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika. (Cornell University Press, 1997).

Highly original and provocative, Russian Talk is one of the most engaging recent books in our field. In an ethnographic study of conversational genres and practices in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Professor Ries employs sophisticated methods of analysis and shows a rich grasp of the discipline without being at all hampered by disciplinary limits. Her argument is straightforward but flexible, her writing lively and clear, and her theoretical references well integrated into the text. This is Nancy Ries's first book, a very impressive scholarly debut.

Best Article in Slavic Women's Studies

Jane Costlow. "The Gallop, The Wolf, The Caress: Eros and Nature in The Tragic Menagerie." The Russian Review, 56 (April 1997).

Professor Costlow outlines and interprets a woman writer's life and work, showing how they resonate in Russian literature and culture of the Silver Age and beyond. The subtle and illuminating treatment of Lidiia Zinovieva-Annibal offers new ways to approach the Russian poetic and cultural canon, questions the reader may ponder for a long time afterward. We are all looking forward to Jane Costlow's translation of The Tragic Menagerie.

Best Translation in Slavic Women's Studies

Eve Levin, trans. and ed. Women in Russian History from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, authored by Natalia Pushkareva. (M. E. Sharpe , 1997).

This is a very special book, and its translation is a major accomplishment. The long term collaboration between author Natalia Pushkareva and translator Eve Levin joins a tradition more familiar from great work in literary translation. The result is an impressive translation that, if anything, improves on the original. Pushkareva's text itself is rendered with precision and liveliness, while quoted passages convey the flavor of various historical eras. Levin never allows the translation to stumble, and her vocabulary is wonderfully rich but succinct. This version of Women in Russian History suggests a constructive model for interactive work between scholars in women's studies across linguistic and national borders.